The present invention relates to a cassette for loading glass substrates, and more particularly to a cassette for loading glass substrates which is small and light and prevents large glass substrates for liquid crystal display devices from drooping and reducing the pitch between adjacent glass substrates.
Generally, a cassette is part of an assembly of elements, e.g. fixing elements and controlling and guiding cutter devices, etc. Therefore, a cassette for loading glass substrates of a liquid crystal display device utilizes a glass substrate-carrying robot for guiding them to the next step in the process of manufacturing liquid crystal display devices.
FIG. 1 is a front view of a conventional cassette for loading glass substrates. As shown in the figure, the conventional cassette for loading glass substrates 10 has a plurality of edge supporting members 5 for maintaining glass substrates 3 in position inside the cassette.
Since the edge supporting member 5 is fixed as a protrusion to both side supports 7 of the cassette 10, when loading the glass substrate 3 of a liquid crystal display device, the edge supporting members 5 support the ends of the glass substrate 3 but not the middle portion thereof, which permits the glass substrate to sag or droop. In connection with a glass substrate 3 of a liquid crystal display device, because its thickness is less than 1 mm and the degree of drooping or sagging is in proportion to the size of the glass substrate, the possibility of the glass substrate breaking is substantially increased.
Moreover, because it is hard to maintain the loaded glass substrate in a horizontal position, it is easy to cause interference with a glass substrate-carrying robot, and therefore the damage rate of the glass substrate is very high. Furthermore, the conventional cassettes for loading glass substrates have been generally applied to glass substrates for small size liquid crystal display devices, so that it is inappropriate to apply these cassettes to glass substrates for large size liquid crystal display devices.